Little Kid Flips

Welcome back to AcroYoga family. I am really excited that you are here to join me for some fun kid flips. And we are going to begin today with a little centering breath. So inhale, reach your hands to the sky, exhale through your midline. Nice more just like that, stretching your arms as far out as they go, breathing in up.

Exhale down through center. Once more, sweep like long wings up to the sky, exhale. I'm going to take three om's and I hope that you join me. Breathing in. Om Om Om Sweep your fingers, reach nice and high as you breathe in.

Forward fold, hinging at your hips as you breathe out. You can bend your knees on the bottom and inhale, halfway lift. Push into your thighs, reach the crown of your head towards me. Forward fold, breathing out. Inhale, sweep your arms out and up and overhead.

So that is a half sun salutation and I'm going to add in a song. If you'd like to sing along, you can do it or just do those moves once more. Here we go. Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are. Nice job. Should we do it one more time? Just a little bit faster. Here we go.

Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are. Nice job. Give yourselves a round of applause.

Okay. So that's our warmup. You can do that any time you'd like to during the day and right now we're going to move onto our mats and do a little bit of a hip warmup before we start basing. So come down, take your left leg back and behind you, place that knee on the ground and we'll start with a dragon stretch. Again reaching your wings to the sky and exhale, stick your tongue out as they come down.

Inhale lifting up, maybe a back bend at the top, exhale, once more, inhale, sweep your arms, exhale, out through center. And now you can take a twist by placing your left hand on the ground or your left hand to the outside of your front leg. Look back and behind your right shoulder, inhale long, exhale, deepen your twist and then unwind back to center, take a lizard lunge hip stretch so your palms can stay right here on the ground or you might want to come onto your forearms. You can begin to just cycle forward and back a little bit to invite some movement or rest in stillness. Walk your hands back in, place your hands on the ground, step your back leg forward in space and then your right leg back and behind you.

Knee comes onto the earth, inhale sweeping up, this time really give a big roar. Inhale lifting up, make a silly sound. You can make any sound that you want your dragon to make on this next one. And then palms together, right hand to the inside of your left foot, if you'd like a slightly deeper stretch, take your right elbow to the outside of your leg. Look over your shoulder, breathe here.

Find lizard hip stretch. So your knee can come a little bit out to the side, your palms can stay here or you can come all the way onto your forearms and then wonder what kind of tail you would have if you really were a lizard. Come back up and this time sweep your leg back and behind you starting in table pose and your child may have been following along or just watching. And this next one we call bear cub in a cave. So they rest underneath you as you get to be their cave.

So you may encourage them to crawl around, they might want to sit and rest, take two more breath cycles in your downward facing dog. And you might want to really snuggle your little bear cub so you can come down into a child's pose. They may also come into a child's pose. Resting here for a moment. Okay, are you ready to fly?

We are ready to fly. So make your way onto your back and we'll start by placing your baby or child on your shins. If your child is longer than your shins, we have other options for you. Right now your baby should be able to hang out on your shins and we'll start by placing hands on hips and lifting your legs to the sky. And then check in.

Did you like that? Do you want to do more? They should be able to say yes or no. And then lift back up if they said yes and bring it back down. This is a first inversion.

You can take two to three of these if they like it. And then if you're ready for a little bit more, reach towards their hips, straighten through your legs, lift them all the way up and place their feet onto the earth. They might sit, they might stand, they usually will stand after you've done that a couple of times and then we can reverse it. Holding onto their hips, reaching them all the way up and then placing them back. Ta-da! Let's do that one more time.

Hands on hips, lifting, reaching all the way up, balancing here, getting strong arms for parents, placing them on the ground and look, ta-da! That time he nailed it, standing up. We'll reverse the whole thing and come back. Here we are. Bring your child to sit on your belly for a moment. Take a few breath cycles to quiet and calm the nerve system.

Once your child knows that you can be a little bit like a jungle gym, they might want to do more than three. You might have to set a limit, but it's really fun to do that a lot. Make your way up into seated and we'll take a little cool down stretch. You can be in Baddha Konasana with the bottoms of your feet together. Your child may want to sit in your lap or they may want to mirror you and be right next to you.

And we'll come back to that good old nursery rhyme, row, row, row your boat. You can listen or sing with me as you rock from side to side. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. And then ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, it's your foot phone. So if you can bring your foot to your ear, you can say, hello, I'm sorry, I'm doing yoga right now, I can't talk.

And then either holding your legs like a platter or taking your knee in your elbow pit, we'll say rocker by baby right here. Inhaling together, listen carefully to the words. Rocker by baby in the treetop, when the wind blows the cradle will rock, when the bow swings so gentle and sweet, it will send baby directly to sleep. Give that baby a kiss, place it down on the ground, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, it's your other foot phone. I still can't talk right now, I'm doing yoga, okay, great.

So hold that around, rocking from side to side. Rocker by baby in the treetop, when the wind blows the cradle will rock, when the bow swings so gently and sweet, it will send baby directly to sleep. Give that baby a kiss, place that baby down and then turn towards your baby and we'll give a nice little stretch together. So you can mirror each other with cross legs, reach across your body to your opposite arm and take an easy little pretzel stretch. Inhale back through center, exhale other side, inhale back to center, give your baby a very big namaste, thank you and we'll set up for what I call a sandwich savasana.

So you are going to lie down on your stomach, if you want a little extra support like a blanket or a pillow, please take that and your baby may sit or lie down on top of you. This part is probably easier with an actual child, there you go. And you may pause here so you take a longer rest or just take 10 breath cycles resting here quietly. And when it's time to come back up, support your child as they roll onto one side. You can curl in and snuggle them for just a moment.

Press your hands into the floor to bring you up into seated. And again, they may want to sit next to you or they may want to sit in your lap as we take three om's to close our practice today. And then if you'd like to, you can say om shanti which means peace, namaste. And if you look to your little one, you see a little twinkle in their eye, you should give them a namaste too. Thank you, have a great day.